Sourdough pancakes with butter on plate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I made raspberry pancakes this morning in honor of my 92-year-old father. Dad has become a will o’ the wisp of himself, gasping for air, his cheeks and eyes sunken, barely able to sip water, drugged to the gills on morphine and Atavan. But when the nurse came in and said, “Larry, do you want anything?,” Dad opened his eyes and said “Pancakes.”

On his deathbed my father wants pancakes. When my brother sent this update from his mobile device to mine, I read it and broke into a grin. My father remembers the pleasure and comfort of butter and syrup, the texture of egg, flour, and milk fried to delectable lightness. I wish I could make pancakes for him. I wish he could eat pancakes at this point. But I’m 2,500 miles away and he can’t swallow solid food.

So instead, I defrost a package of raspberries, their summer tartness intact by some miracle of modern science, and make a batch of pancakes.

My sister phones me from the hallway outside Dad’s room at the Actors Fund Home to tell me that it won’t be long now. His hands are turning blue. Tremors shake his body. Cathy says he told the nurse, “Get those three kids out of here!”

He thinks I’m there with him, and that makes me happy.

So I eat my pancakes, and remember my father fixing Sunday breakfast for us. The menu was always the same: scrambled eggs and bacon and Sara Lee pecan coffee cake with sugar icing that dripped over the side of the aluminum pan when you heated it in the oven. Butter, cinnamon, crunchy pecans. The kitchen smelled of it for hours afterward. For years, I continued the tradition for Christmas brunch until Sara Lee stopped making pecan coffee cake. That was a sad day.

I fly to New Jersey in less than 24 hours. But I may not make it in time. I told my brother and sister in one of our many phone calls, “Dead or alive, I’m still coming. I just want to drink hot cocoa and have a snow day with you guys.”

Paul and Cathy hover over Dad until he shoos them away so that he can focus on the hard work of leaving his body. Flashes of memory light my mind like shooting stars as I keep the pancakes hot in the oven, the bacon crisp, the butter and syrup warming in the microwave.

I’ll be in Englewood, New Jersey by 10 o’clock tomorrow night. Because of the blizzard on the East coast, I had to change my flight. If I don’t get there in time to hold my father’s hand and say my final goodbye, at least I prepared and ate his final meal for him. Pancakes. Sweet, sad, and delicious.

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